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My personal musings about anything that gets on my radar screen--heavily dominated by politics.

2004-08-02

The Polling Trend

Others have done an admirable job of going through the numbers, and I'll trust that if you managed to find my little site you've probably gone through the big boys who did that for us.

So, I'll just add a comment: if, as I think my average seems to indicate, John Kerry got a grand "bump"-let of 0.5%, that tells me that he may have hit his high-water mark for the year. 45 interminable minutes of tough talk don't really wipe out 19 years of public life. Almost. . .but not really.

On the other hand, if the numbers indicating "hard support" and undecided hold up, that shows that there's only about 10-15% of the electorate that is even open to persuasion. So after a four day infomercial, John Kerry managed to sway about 3% of the swayable. Not a very good performance, by any indication. However, after four years, the President still needs to make his case to the rest of this swayable part of the electorate. That's not a very good sign.

In other words, I gave John Kerry too much credit--I predicted a 3-5 point bounce, and it did not materialize. More encouraging, however, is how little he managed to break in to the mid-ground. For the President to put this away, he'll need to pull in a significantly larger portion of the mid-ground--which would translate into a 5-point bump.

That will take some doing. But if he reminds the people why they like him in the first place, and if the protesters do what they're fixin' to do in force, I think it'seasily within reach.

I'm feeling optimistic today.
Posted by: Michael / 8/02/2004 11:51:00 PM

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